Colts: What to make of recent personnel changes
By Jerry Trotta
The Indianapolis Colts’ coaching staff underwent extreme turnover this offseason.
The flurry of moves included now-former offensive coordinator Nick Sirianni taking the Eagles’ head coaching job. Indianapolis responded by promoting quarterbacks coach Marcus Brady, where he served for the previous two seasons, to the OC position.
The Colts also have a new assistant special teams and running backs coach, and have hired Hall of Famer Kevin Mawae as an assistant offensive line coach and Scott Milanovich as quarterbacks coach. The laundry list goes on, but we’ll spare you any further details.
If fans are wondering about the point behind regurgitating all that information, well, it would appear Indy is undergoing a similar magnitude of changes to its personnel staff.
To kick things off, Kevin Rogers, formally the organization’s pro personnel director, has been promoted to the director of player personnel position.
Additionally, Brian Decker, who previously served as Indy’s director of player development, was named the franchise’s director of team development.
Brian Decker was named the Colts’ director of team development. He enters his fifth season with the team and previously served as the director of player development from 2018-19. https://t.co/Gac0IN8IdL
— Adam Caplan (@caplannfl) July 26, 2021
The Colts made seismic changes to their personnel staff this week.
What should fans make of the timing of these changes? Not much, to be honest. The front office was likely mulling this overhaul, for lack of a better term, for the entire offseason. With training camp officially kicking off on Wednesday, now was the best time to make them all official.
It’s encouraging to know that nobody was fired. Both Rogers and Decker are highly regarded in NFL circles and have been with the franchise for several years. In the latter’s case, he’s entering his 21st (!) season with the Colts, having joined as an operations intern during the team’s training camp way back in 2001.
Chris Ballard is a huge advocate for roster continuity, and it’s clear the general manager thinks that should apply to the organization’s football operations staff as well — at least, as best as possible.
In more noteworthy news, however, the Colts made some franchise history when they confirmed the hiring of Kasia Omilian as a scouting assistant. The former football ops intern becomes the first woman added to Indy’s personnel department on a full-time basis.
Neat move by the @Colts: team has hired Kasia Omilian as a scouting assistant, the first female they've ever added to that department in a full-time role. She previous interned in football ops for the club + was a recruiting asst. for 4 yrs while at the University of Washington.
— Zak Keefer (@zkeefer) July 26, 2021
As Zak Keefer of The Athletic notes, Omilian was a football recruiting assistant for four seasons (2016-20) while she attended the University of Washington. During that span, she worked as a football operations intern for the Steelers in 2017 and 2018.
That was a lot to digest for Colts fans, but there’s no reason to freak out, as they merely felt it was the right time to announce all these changes. Given the strides Indy’s roster has made over the last few seasons, suffice to say all of these promotions were earned.
The fact history was made along the way makes it all the more worthwhile, too.
